


The Doctor's Important Mission

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Foreshadowing, Friendship, Games, Humour, No Angst, Promises, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 10:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19810435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: Clara has given the Doctor an important mission. The last thing he wants is to fail the mission - but he's lost in still another corridor!





	The Doctor's Important Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Total fluff, inspired by an actual event from my childhood (see end notes).

The Doctor knew he only had minutes to complete his mission. Any delay, any failure, would be catastrophic to resolving the ongoing event. As usual, people were relying on him. 

No, worse than people— _children_ were relying on him. He couldn’t fail them.

And he couldn’t fail Clara. After all, it was Clara who had given him this mission in the first place. Her beautiful eyes had pleaded with him. Their unspoken message—“We’re all counting on you. _I’m_ counting on you”—had been crystal-clear.

The Doctor ran a bony hand through his curly grey hair as he realized he was lost in yet another corridor. Where did he have to go again?

_Get a grip on yourself, man_ , he thought. _You’ve dealt with Daleks, Cybermen, Draconians, Missy, Beep the Meep—this is no different. And it’s just another corridor. Same old, same old. It will all come together, like it always does. This corridor even has windows for once, see?_

This last fact did little to reassure the Doctor as the presence of windows allowed him to more accurately gauge the passage of time, emphasizing the lack of remaining minutes before his mission would fail.

The Doctor narrowly avoided tripping over a small, moving obstacle in front of him. He barely paid any attention to whatever it was before finding a new corridor branching off from the first one. A half-dozen doors with glass windows were evenly spaced out on each side of the hallway, each with a number.

The Doctor tried each one. All were locked, except for one at the end, which actually did not have a number on the window; instead, it led to a short staircase leading up to a dimly lit room behind a large blue curtain.

With a sigh of relief, the Doctor finally found what he was looking for. A communication device, apparently. It looked like it had seen better days, but it would serve its purpose. The Doctor made a mental note to return here at some point in the future to give the device an upgrade.

He flipped a switch (red-coloured, of course—it even lit up) and activated the device. A brief, but piercing squeal sounded through the room and into the room beyond the curtain, causing the Doctor to wince. He thought he could hear some disgruntled voices reacting to this. But he ignored them.

“Ahem,” he said into the silver microphone, his sonorous voice now amplified. “People of Earth, please attend. I have a very important announcement to make.” Beyond the curtain, the hubbub of voices actually seemed to intensify. “ _Shut it!_ Your lives may depend upon your attention.” 

That did the trick. Dead silence in the room beyond.

The Doctor looked at his watch. 18:59:56 …57…58…59…19:00.

“Bingo is now open,” he announced. “Thank you for your attention. You may now go about your business.”

The Doctor, his mission complete, shut off the communication device and turned to see Clara Oswald, his travelling companion and long-suffering teacher at Coal Hill School (or should that be travelling teacher at Coal Hill School and long-suffering travelling companion?), standing in the doorway, arms crossed and tapping her foot.

“What? You asked me to announce that bingo was open at 7,” the Doctor protested.

“I didn’t ask you to traumatize the students in the process. Some of the kids thought the building was on fire. And you made quite a scene nearly tripping over several children in the corridor getting here.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Oops. Tunnel vision. Getting tripped over is a life lesson, anyway. Do them good.”

Clara just glared at him.

“You told me this Coal Hill Family Festival you organized was getting a little boring,” he said. “And this bingo thing sounded really important, so I wanted to make sure…”

Clara arched an eyebrow. “Do you even know what bingo is?”

“Of course I know what bingo is…”

The Doctor paused at that point.

Clara leaned forward. “And?”

“And I was hoping you’d change the subject. OK, drummer for the Beatles. Happy now? Having him visit will certainly liven up-”

“That’s _Ringo_ , Doctor.”

“Oh,” the Doctor said. “I think I might have deleted my knowledge of bingo the last time I did some mental housecleaning.” He thought for a moment. “I know!” He started to sing: “ _There was a farmer had a dog and…_ ”

“Wrong bingo, Doctor,” Clara interrupted. It took a moment for the Doctor to notice that she was barely trying to hold in the laughter. “Come on,” she sighed. “I’ll show you what bingo is, just as long as you don’t scare away Adrian. It took me an hour to talk him into being the caller.”

They were a few paces away from the classroom that had been set up for the game when Clara said, “When you talk about mental housecleaning, you’d never delete your memories of me, would you?”

The Doctor stopped and looked at her intently. He gently tapped her in the middle of her forehead.

“Those memories, Clara, are protected.”

**Author's Note:**

> As a boy growing up in Western Canada, "Family Fun Night" was a highlight of the school year, when my school would host an evening family party with contests, competitions and games - including, yes, bingo. One year a friend of mine was asked to announce that the bingo game was open, so he took to the microphone on the gymnasium stage and made it sound so serious that people thought he was about to announce either an evacuation or that someone's car had been run into in the parking lot!
> 
> The only "concordance" items for this story are Beep the Meep was one of the more comical villains introduced in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, and the concept of "mental housecleaning" was referenced several times during Twelve's era.


End file.
